ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Thai university students compete to develop technology for self-driving vehicles as Thailand seeks to take its place on the world stage
The development of in-vehicle embedded software will change the face of the Thai automotive industry and allow us to compete on the world stage
The challenge thrown at contestants at the Annual Student Meeting on Automotive Embedded Systems (AMAS) was to design software that could control a model car to run past a set of obstacles.
The LKB48 Team, a group of computer engineering students at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, emerged as the winners for best time and distance.
Organised by Toyota Tsusho Nexty Electronics (Thailand), which develops in-vehicle embedded software for Toyota, the AMAS competition provides an opportunity to university students interested in automotive embedded systems to show their talents on software development, which is crucial to self-driving vehicles.
Isara Naranirattisai, LKB48 team member, said that after designing their software programme, team members were responsible for making sure that each part of the vehicle, from the motor to the battery, works precisely according to design.
“We designed the software to control a model car to drive autonomously. At the integration process, we run the software to control the car’s friction, the speed of the wheels, object detection sensors, and lane detection control,” he said.
Every team was challenged to make their vehicle drive autonomously, running past all obstructions, and turning right or left exactly based on the defined route. The vehicle which takes the shortest time reaching the designated points safely without errors is the winner.
“Self-driving, autonomous vehicles are the hottest technology trend and the AMAS is an exciting and challenging contest that allows us to show off our talents and skills,” said Isara.
This is the second AMAS contest, which was designed to promote the development of skilled engineers in automotive software among university students. A key mission is to push Thailand to become a hub of automotive software development in the Asia-Pacific region.
Toyota Tsusho Nexty Electronics (Thailand) cooperated with Toyota Tsusho Denso Electronics (Thailand), Thai Embedded Systems Association (TESA), Kasetsart University and Tech Source Systems (Thailand) in sponsoring the contest.
Toyota Tsusho Nexty Electronics (Thailand) sponsored the model car and related components under the Model Base Development (MBD) initiative.
Isara said the MBD is a new technology that allows developers to design a model driving simulation where they can figure out correct driving speeds, driving efficiency, safety and fuel economy for a prototype vehicle.
“We designed the programme processing on a Rasberry Pi board and integrated that with the Freedom development board controlling the system,” said the developer, explaining that another new 3D remote sensing technology, Lidar, helped them measure distance from a target by illuminating it with a pulsed laser light, which helped reduce accidents.
This year, 12 software teams from universities throughout Thailand participated.
Masami Ikura, chief technology officer at Toyota Tsusho Nexty Electronics (Thailand) said Thailand is seen as a major automotive production base. To enhance the country’s competitiveness, the development of automotive software should be promoted, he said.
“We believe that the development of in-vehicle embedded software will change the face of the Thai automotive industry and allow us to compete on the world stage. So, we see programs like this as being essential, which allows the Thai educational sector to incubate and develop human resources in the area. If Thailand can move a step further, the country will be able to increase its competitiveness and eventually push itself to become one of the global hubs of automotive software development in the future,” he said.
Currently, Thailand is ranked 10th in the world in automotive production at around 2 million vehicles a year, with an average 3% growth rate. However, the arrival of technology is bringing about new challenges to the automotive industry, creating new demands for using smart software and technology in vehicles.
According to Zion Market Research, the value of the global automotive software market is around US$159 billion, which is expected to increase to US$225 billion by 2021. Major automotive software development bases remain in the United States, England, Germany, and Japan.
The market survey conducted by Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) reported that the Thai embedded software market in 2016 was valued at 5.27 billion baht. The in-house producer, which oversees developing embedded software for use in its company’s products, showed the highest growth in numbers of entrepreneurs.
Ikura said the autonomous vehicle is a trend that the automotive industry has to move on. Currently, some smart car features are available in vehicles available on the market, but they’re still semi-automatic, not self-driving. Ikura said that even though Thailand doesn’t have a policy on autonomous vehicle development, the company still offers support to help Thailand become a base of smart automotive software development for the world.
“If Thailand can shift itself from the centre of automotive manufacturing to a hub of automotive software development, it’s not too hard for the country to stay on the forefront on the world stage,” he said.
In this year’s AMAS contest, the winning team received a 30,000 baht cash prize and a trip to Japan to visit the Toyota and Denso museum. The first runner-up was Team Double E from King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, which received a 10,000 baht award. Team Antman from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi was the second runner-up and also was voted for the special prize of Good Design Award and received two 5,000 baht prizes as a result.